Hi and welcome to my 83/83 Block Herald of Agony Gladiator Guide. This build uses Cyclone or Molten Strike with ~100% chance to poison to gain Virulence stacks, all while being extremely tanky thanks to 83/83 block, 90+ Life Gain on Hit, blind, and a decent life pool.

3.6 Changes
A few QoL improvements was made in the 3.6. Patch. The most noticable will be that Convocation now has a 4 second cooldown (from 8), and besides that there were some reductions of mana costs for the build's support spells. There's also a small damage nerf of about 9% due to changes done to hatred.

The Build in action. You'll find more footage in the video section

Path of Building (current high budget gear): https://pastebin.com/shpAcf5T

1.0. Introduction

1.1. Pros & Cons

Pros

Can do all map mods & content

You are immortal 83% of the time!

Works well on a budget

Delving made easy (not sure how deep it can go yet though)

Cons

A bit weak to Degen damage

Not the fastest mapper

Getting all the corruptions can be hard/expensive

1.2. Cyclone vs Molten Strike

I prefer the use of Cyclone for this build, but it is a matter of taste and I'll list pro's and con's for both skills here.
Cyclone Pro's:

I won't go into any detail for the following active skill options, yet you could use them to make a max block range character.

Lancing Steel
Lancing Steel - LGoH - GMP - Poison - Faster Attacks - Pierce/VP
This is a good option for proccing virulence if you prefer more of a range character. Main drawback is dropping LGoH from claws.

Barrage
Barrage / Kinectic Blast - GMP - LGoH - Poison - Faster Attacks - Pierce / Withering Touch / Lesser Poison
As you'll be using a wand the main drawback will be that you won't be able to use shield charge or fortify.

1.4. Playstyle

Lead the way for your Agony Crawler by going through packs and see how your personal Artillery Cannon blasts everything around you. Use Abyssal Cry when it's off cool down, and Tempest Shield and Convocation every now and then. The crawler is immortal and you are not far behind yourself.

2.0. PoB, Skill Trees, Ascendancy, and Leveling

This build is very flexible with what items you can use with it. The Coming Calamity, which is one of the core items, isn't even required to be able to run late game content. As an example you could replace the Coming Calamity with a Kaom's heart and craft/buy a minion helmet. This would net you a lot of life, but it might leave you with some hassle to solve the %mana reserved issues. Thus I recommend you to use the PoB links to get a guideline of what to aim for with the various budgets, the rest I leave up to you. In section 4.1.3. you can find a list of gear alternatives and what affixes to look for on your rare items. You may also want to look through the comments of this thread as plenty of good alternative setups have been posted there!

Note: Each PoB setup includes slightly different skill trees in addition to the gear that is used. A reason behind doing this is that I've tried to keep the low budget and the recommended setup from becoming too dependent on gaining +Dex/Int from gear.

2.1. Ascendancy - Gladiator

The Gladiator class is used for its Versatile Combatant (chance to block spell damage is equal to your attack block), and Violent Retaliation's +4 to maximum block.

While you might think of going Scion Gladiator instead I wouldn't recommend it. With the recent changes to Spell Block it is far too costly to get any good levels of it, and you will only be able to reach 82/75 maximum block.

I leveled my character with Herald of Agony from as soon as I could use it, even if it can be wise to wait for lvl 31 and the Poison Support before you try committing to it. Link Cyclone (or Molten Strike) with Poison + Lesser Poison + Life on Hit and get a Double Claw (Life & Mana on hit) with attack speed on level 36 and that will take you to maps. Herald of Agony should be linked with (in order of importance) Pierce + Damage on Full Life + Minion Speed/Minion Damage/LMP + Vicious Projectiles/LMP

Feel Free to pick up the block nodes, more life nodes, or more minion nodes earlier. The Leveling tree's should serve as an outline to how you can do it, but depending on your gear and taste you can always go for what suits you better.

Up to level 55 when you can use the Coming Calamity, and after if you don't have one yet, you can go for any other body armour. The mana cost for Herald of Agony with the links found in 4.1.2. isn't too high even on a 6L, so if you have a tabula go for it!

The remaining links you can pick up when you have the sockets & links for it.

I also strongly recommend to level 6 Herald of Agony gems in your off-sockets. Having a fairly good chance at getting at least one of them to lvl 21 + 20 quality will be very nice indeed.

*Blood Magic can be used instead of Poison if you have a Mortem Morsu.

2.3. Starting a League with this build

This build should be a pretty good choice for a league starter as long as you don't want to go super fast. It will take a while to get all the desired items, but if you take a look at the low budget setup you'll see that you don't need much to get it going.

2.4. Pantheons

Major:

Soul of Solaris provides many really nice defensive benefits for when you actually get hit

All the gems & links are based upon the Recommended/high budget setup. If you want to see the the setup for the Low budget build, check the corresponding Path of Building link found at section "2.0. PoB, Skill Trees, Ascendancy, and Leveling".

4.1.2. Gems & Links

Preferably you want 3G 2R 1B on your 6L. 4G 1R 1B will almost give you the same damage, and 3G 1R 2B will work well until you are willing to try for 5 off colours.Body: Herald of Agony - Pierce - Damage on Full Life - Minion Damage / Minion Speed + Vile Toxins + Empower 4 / Maim / Vicious Projectiles / Minion Speed (last 4 in order of dmg)
Getting 5 Off-colours on the Calamity can be hard, which is why I've included multiple alternatives for the 6th link.

Gloves: Cyclone - Life Gain on Hit - Fortify/Blood Magic - Withering Touch/Fortify - Faster Attacks - Poison
Note that I get 2 links from my gloves. Poison is a REQUIRED gem so if you don't have the gloves then you need to socket it. Lesser Poison is also a good option until you get an extra 20% chance to poison from gear or jewels.

Shield: Tempest Shield - Curse on Hit - Temporal Chains
Here you can experiment if you like. I love Temporal Chains but the only thing that's required is really the Tempest Shield.

4.1.3. Gear & Options

Remember that the attribute requirement of the items is what decides how hard it will be to roll off colours on it. For Example: If you have the option to get a STR/DEX base for you gloves that will make it super easy to colour them. Go to https://siveran.github.io/calc.html to check the average chromatics you need for your item. You can also use the jeweler's trick explained in this video: https://youtu.be/ycrneiNryNw

Helmet

Any helmet with the "Summoned Agony Crawler fires 2 additional Projectiles" will work. I prefer to use a rare helmet so I can take some strain of my other gear and jewels. Setups not using the Calming Calamity will probably prefer the "Herald of Agony has 30% reduced Mana Reservation" enchant instead.

Prefixes to Look for:

+# to maximum life

+# to maximum Life + #% increased maximum Life

(depending on base type) Evasion / Armour

Suffixes to look for:

+# to Dexterity

+# to Intelligence

+#% to XXX Resistance

Nearby Enemies take 9% increased Physical Damage

Nearby Enemies have -9% to Chaos Resistance

#% of Life Regenerated per second

+# to Strength

If you don't have a 6L body armour you can also use an Elder Helmet with Minion dmg & +2-3 to level of socketed minion gems. You can also try getting the essence mod "Socketed Gems gain 50% of Physical Damage as extra Lightning Damage" in combination with minion rolls, to get a helmet provides similar damage to a calamity setup. That way you can free up your body armour for a defensive body armour of your choice. Kaom's Heart, Loreweave, or a good rare one would all be good options in that case.

Body Armour

The Coming Calamity

Without the Coming Calamity getting a level 21 HoAg will become a higher priority. This is because at lvl 21 the crawler goes from 3% to 4% increased attack speed and 19% to 20% damage per virulence stack, adding 40% iAS and 20% damage in addition to the extra flat damage.

Alternatives

Lioneye's Vision
Cheap and gives your HoAg with a free pierce. Good alternative if you don't have the Calamity or if you want some life on your body armour.

Tabula & Skin of the Loyal
Great to start off with.

Rare Armour
Any rare armour with Life will do. Unless you are playing SSF you should be able to get a Calamity or Lioneye's fairly easily, and thus not use a rare armour for long.

Gloves

Rare Elder Gloves with Chance to block Attack Damage.

Prefixes to Look for:

+# to maximum life

+# to maximum Life + #% increased maximum Life

Minions deal #% increased Damage

Suffixes to look for:

#% Chance to Block Attack Damage

Socketed Gems are Supported by Level # Faster Attacks

Socketed Gems are Supported by Level # Poison

+# to Dexterity

+# to Intelligence

+#% to XXX Resistance

Socketed Skills have 18% increased Attack Speed

+# to Strength

Boots

Any Rare one will do

Prefixes to Look for:

+# to maximum life

#% increased Movement Speed

+# to maximum Life + #% increased maximum Life

Unaffected by Chilled Ground

Unaffected by Shocked Ground

+# to Strength

Suffixes to look for:

+# to Dexterity

+# to Intelligence

+#% to XXX Resistance

+# to Strength

Weapon

In most cases a rare Gemini Claw will be the best option. However, if you are on a budget or playing SSF then the Advancing Fortress is a great option.

When using Herald of Purity you want to get as many of the "Socketed gems are supported by XXX" as possible. As long as they work for a melee attack it is good.

Trigger a Socketed Spell when you Use a Skill (great for desecrate & offerings)

#% chance to Poison on Hit

#% chance to Blind Enemies on Hit with Attacks

Curse Enemies with Level # Despair on Hit

Despair on hit provides with a decent damage boost if you don't already have another curse in your setup. It's not however anything that I would aim to get when buying/crafting a weapon, it's more of a bonus.

Shield

Victario's Charity is a DPS / Clear speed option for you. The Chance to grant Frenzy Charges to nearby allies will make your crawler deal quite a bit more damage. In total the 3 charges provide 45% AS, 12% more damage, and 15% movement speed for the crawler (Charges are more powerful on minions than on players). The drawback with this shield is it's low block chance, 24%, making it harder to reach 83/83. Credit to ADMON for suggesting and trying out the shield.

Lioneye's Remorse is one of the best defensive shields you can get, especially if you can manage to get the +1 to maximum chance to block attack damage corruption on it.

Any unique shield that has life and around 30% block chance will make a good substitute to the Lioneye's Remorse.

Personally I don't like to use a rare shield here, as it is hard to get a good one with the +1 max block corruption. Yet if you don't care about the implicit then look for these prefixes & suffixes:
Prefixes to Look for:

+# to maximum life

+# to maximum Life + #% increased maximum Life

#% additional Physical Damage Reduction

#% increased Area of Effect

#% increased maximum Life

#% to maximum Fire Resistance

#% to maximum Cold Resistance

#% to maximum Lightning Resistance

#% to all maximum Resistances

Suffixes to look for:

+#% Chance to Block

Gain an Endurance, Frenzy or Power charge when you Block

Recover #% of your Maximum Life when you Block

#% additional Physical Damage Reduction

+# to Dexterity

+# to Intelligence

+#% to XXX Resistance

+# to Strength

Amulet

The Anvil. Try to get one with the 4-5% chance to block attack damage corruption.

If you are SSF aim for life & resists here.

Rings

Prefixes to Look for:

+# to maximum life

+# to maximum Mana (can help if you often run out of mana while cycloning)

# to Total Mana Cost of Skills

Suffixes to look for:

+# to Dexterity

+# to Intelligence

+#% to XXX Resistance

+# to Strength

Minions have #% increased Movement Speed

+# Life gained for each Enemy hit by your Attacks

Belt

Belt of the Deceiver, Gluttony, or a rare Leather/Stygian belt

Prefixes to Look for:

+# to maximum life

#% increased Movement Speed

#% increased maximum Life

Suffixes to look for:

+# to Dexterity

+# to Intelligence

+#% to XXX Resistance

+# to Strength

Jewels

The Red Nightmare

For the remaining rare jewels you preferably want Ghastly Abyssal jewels. Regular jewels can however be used to reach 100% chance to poison.

Not using Withering Touch? In that case is the fossil mod "Nearby enemies take 9% increased physical damage" better than the -9% to chaos resistance version.

Vorici at the Syndicate Research Branch makes it a lot easier to gain the correct colours on your Calamity.

6.0. FAQ & Priorities (READ BEFORE POSTING)

Why don't you use Molten Strike?
My personal preference is Cyclone. You can read Pro's and Con's for both skills in section 1.2.

What if I don't have a Coming Calamity?
You'll do just fine on a tabula or a regular 5L up until that point. You just have to wait to use Hatred until you have the Calamity.

What about Life Gained / Recover Life on Block and/or Aegis Aurora?
Personally I am not a fan of the various gain/recover life/es on block mechanics. My reasoning behind my standpoint is that it'll not be of much use when you'll need it the most, recovering life after taking a big hit from a single opponent. The affixes are pretty good when you've a lot of targets one you, but in that case you'll be recovering a few thousand life/s from your life gained on hit already.

I don't have enough Dexterity, help?!
Ideally you should try to get your dexterity from your gear. Jewels, helmet, ring, boots, gloves, & claws are the possible candidates unless you essence craft a belt. On the tree you have easy access to one +30 dex node, and can also pick up the +20 nodes at the Marauder, Templar, and Witch start. The Marauder & Templar nodes have the added benefits of giving you some attack speed.

Cyclone spends so much mana. How can I solve this?
You have two options. Either you get a claw with Mana gained on Hit (Double Claw (lvl 36) / Twin Claw (lvl 57) / Gemini Claw (lvl 72), or you link your cyclone to Blood Magic. If you already have a LgoH claw then you can temporarily swap out the LgoH support gem, otherwise you should do quite fine without the Lesser Poison support for a total of 80% chance to poison.

Can it clear Hall of the Grandmasters?
No. While 99% of the grandmasters will be super easy, there are a few of them that you will not be able to kill with this setup.

6.1. Gear Priorities

Check the Path of Building setups for complete sets of gear. This is mainly a rough guideline in which order to get some of the specific items. Remember that you always should try to have life on all non-unique gear and be resist capped.

2018-10-26: PoB now includes DPS for the Agony Crawler. Updated PoB setups

2018-10-10: Added flasks to 4.1.3.

2018-10-02: Expanded gear section & added a warcry pob

2018-09-18: Added a mapping video.

2018-09-15: Fixed the leveling trees and added some leveling notes.

2018-09-14: Posted the first version of the guide.

Questions? Please check the FAQ first, and then post a comment in this thread if you can't find an answer there. If you want me or someone else to check the gear on you character, please ensure that your character tab is not set to private.

I knew I recognized your name and build layout and it's because I did your srs build. Welcome back.

Theorycrafting a similar build and want to get your thoughts on:

-Phy to lightning EE setup in the agony, especially with Molten Strike hated-generosity
-Fitting in proj weakness for more damage and to save the Pierce link
-instant abyssal cry to help with clear
-interesting uniques - gluttony belt, surrender, pit of command gloves

I knew I recognized your name and build layout and it's because I did your srs build. Welcome back.

Theorycrafting a similar build and want to get your thoughts on:

-Phy to lightning EE setup in the agony, especially with Molten Strike hated-generosity
-Fitting in proj weakness for more damage and to save the Pierce link
-instant abyssal cry to help with clear
-interesting uniques - gluttony belt, surrender, pit of command gloves

Thank you. It has been a while since I've felt that I had created a build that felt unique and good enough to share.

I guess that you're running Hatred linked with Generosity then as well? That'd give 50% of phys added as Cold, and then PTL for another ~75% (+- a bit depending on if the crawler has that phys to chaos conversion or not). so with ~125% of base dmg dealing cold/lightning you'd get a nice dmg increase with EE. Please do tell how it works when you try it.

Proj weakness is probably the best dps curse for the crawler, but it'd be a big investment to run a 45% HoAg, hatred + blasphemy, some 40% mana reduced would be required. So were you thinking about self casting or using CoH for the curse?

I tried a setup with gluttony (nice for procing painforged i know) but I threw it out after a few maps and a Minotaur as I felt I was taking way too much dmg from trash (where armour makes the biggest difference). In the end I bought the red nightmare instead and was able to swap out my determination + watcher's eye combination (now part of the medium budget setup).

The Surrender I would consider swapping to if I would be able to get one with the +1 maximum block implicit, but until then I'm staying with my Lioneye's Remorse :) The LoB is quite nice on it, but you won't get anything from the armour if you combine it with gluttony.

So far I haven't actually notice if my crawler is able to miss or not. I don't know if it is the new accuracy nodes for minions, or if it might even be a spell its doing, but I'm not sure that you'd actually gain that much from the 1000 accuracy that the Command of the Pit provides.

Proj weakness is probably the best dps curse for the crawler, but it'd be a big investment to run a 45% HoAg, hatred + blasphemy, some 40% mana reduced would be required. So were you thinking about self casting or using CoH for the curse?

Yeah I'd probably do curse on hit with reckoning or tempest shield because I'm not capable of hitting more than two buttons. I even want to do cwdt spirit offering/convocation. Seems worth it to not need Pierce on the crawler.

I tried a setup with gluttony (nice for procing painforged i know) but I threw it out after a few maps and a Minotaur as I felt I was taking way too much dmg from trash (where armour makes the biggest difference). In the end I bought the red nightmare instead and was able to swap out my determination + watcher's eye combination (now part of the medium budget setup).

Makes sense and makes going the surrender route for armor more appealing.

So far I haven't actually notice if my crawler is able to miss or not. I don't know if it is the new accuracy nodes for minions, or if it might even be a spell its doing, but I'm not sure that you'd actually gain that much from the 1000 accuracy that the Command of the Pit provides.

Yeah that was my main purpose of the gluttony plus a bit of lgoh which is overkill with Molten Strike. Not sure how important accuracy is.

Yeah I'd probably do curse on hit with reckoning or tempest shield because I'm not capable of hitting more than two buttons. I even want to do cwdt spirit offering/convocation. Seems worth it to not need Pierce on the crawler.

If you are going to use Proj Weakness instead of Pierce then you'll need a way to reliable curse entire packs. I've a feeling that Tempest Shield and/or reckoning won't be enough. If you somehow can spare the links it might be worth linking it to Molten Strike.

What options for gearing do you have if you havn't a calamity yet? (SSF, yes I know leave out herald of purity)

And your rings and amu are missing in the gear section.

Thanks for the feedback. Rings and amulet are now included.

If you don't have a calamity then you'll do just fine on any 5L or with a tabula. You'll just have to wait with using Herald of Purity & Hatred/Determination until you can find the calamity. I added this to the FAQ as it was a good question :)

No offense, is the Herald of Purity doing anything for you? Is it worth the investment?

It's not doing a lot to be honest. It does help a bit with single target, assists with stacking wither stacks, and works as meat shield. It also makes it possible to apply Virulence Stacks through Tempest shield and other elemental spells, as it adds a physical component to it that can poison.

At the time I bought my claw it was like 20c so getting the extra links on it wasn't much investment financially speaking. Gear wise I guess you can get a regular ring instead of the Essence Worm if you fully skip the HoP, so there's always that option for those who don't want the HoP minions.